


Free

by levitatethis



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst, Future Fic, M/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-17
Updated: 2010-05-17
Packaged: 2017-10-09 12:49:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levitatethis/pseuds/levitatethis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the future Mohinder and Sylar's relationship goes beyond expectations. Mohinder makes a decision.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Free

_And when you wanted blood   
I cut my veins   
And when you wanted love   
I bled myself again   
Now that I’ve had my fill of you   
I’ll give you up forever   
And here I go far away   
I know you’ll find another slave _

Cause now I’m free from what you want   
Now I’m free from what you need   
Now I’m free from what you are

Then a vision came to me   
When you came along   
I gave you everything   
But then you wanted more   
**-Audioslave, _What You Want_   
**  
Mohinder nervously taps out his impatience on the wood floor of Bennet’s office. His eyes skirt along the dark wood bookshelves bursting with novels, academic research, travelogues piled in on each other, upright and sideways, angled yet orderly.

Unable to sit still on the chocolate brown leather sofa, Mohinder leans forward with his elbows resting on twitching knees; anxious eyes try to find the calm in the rapidly beating out pattern of his right foot.

Aware of his own breathing Mohinder jumps up and begins pacing the floor, running his hands through his hair as if trying to shake out the memories.

He stops at Bennet’s desk looking for anything to guide his attention away from what he is doing here. A picture of the family, Sandra with Mr. Muggles and Claire and Lyle on either side grinning wide, gives Mohinder momentary pause.

If only it were so easy, he thinks to himself. If only his life would have been as straightforward.

He is not here out of regret. He is here out of hope for his future. This is the final step. It is the necessary chess move to end this round.

His eyes shoot up as the office door opens.

************ ********** ********** ********** **********   
**  
It is not necessary to go back to the beginning.

India is not the starting point he had convinced himself it was for years. It is not that Shanti or his father’s, important yet obsessive and eventually deadly, research was not significant, but there is a clarity that comes with hindsight.

It is what tells Mohinder to stop looking at the wrong markers.

No, it is not necessary to go back that far; back to a series of moments set in motion, each leaning precariously on the one that followed, pushing it, nudging it into play.

For years he had allowed the first meeting with Sylar, a con man breathing new life into a dead man’s body and anointing himself Zane, to bear the weight of all that came after.

A noisy theatrical show of flashing lights and whistle calls, Mohinder could ignore the more disturbing truth.

There were always choices before him.

It is learning to accept the decisions he has made that prove the true task.

The road trip of lies and half-truths, as much as it was their proper beginning, is not the crux of the point he comes back to. Kindling for fire, it whet the taste for what could be, but Mohinder assigns no more signifier to it than “it was a cold winter when I met my father’s killer.”

To get to the heart of the matter, the ugly and beautiful truth in a schizophrenic cloak, Mohinder must hike along that timeline tangent and move closer to the present. He must tread carefully and not wander off on one of the multitude of other lines that crisscross this one. To only some does he render a second glance, their connection to this one so intertwined that ignorance is foolish rather than bliss, but mostly they only serve to distract.

More dangerous than the glistening poisoned apple is the diversion that harshly tastes of bitter truth in grainy bites and juicy underpinnings.

“To protect the child” is the oft repeated refrain.

“To bind you to me” is the ugly stepsister.

The human pawn maneuvered between them, Molly is a living, breathing bartering tool that allows the superficial facades of their dance to disguise the maroon truth below. She keeps Mohinder’s eyes on the larger picture, a necessary distraction from impending mass murder and lingering stares.

Swallowing pride, the insistent request that Molly not be hurt is a powerful demand begat of past mistakes and a regretful future untold. He uses her to assert himself with Sylar, just barely aware that he is saving her life each time he says her name or stands in front of her, every time he hugs her close or grasps her hand.

Molly is the point triangulated within the walls that house them, literally and figuratively. The North Star in the darkened wilderness sky, she reminds Mohinder of hope that will always exist beyond his reach. A never depreciating currency, she is the glue that holds Mohinder to Sylar’s side.

Threatening her, holding her life in his death splattered hands, Sylar forces Mohinder to follow his zigzag steps away from scattered traces of light with no phosphorescent pretenders to encourage his beliefs. Light does not always equate truth. It is riddled with shadows of uncertainty and possibility. It is messy.

Using Mohinder’s obstructed view, Sylar claws through paper skin; he breaks cells with bites and bleeds his foe ally’s compliance before and after attacking friendly faces that Mohinder tries desperately to protect. Painfully drawn out measures, they both hold the upper hand but the stakes are just that high.

Molly reinforces old beliefs and already learned steps. Back, back, side, together.

But then the outside world, the one that rattles the walls and splits the foundation becomes too much and the safety of Molly’s distraction has to be set aside, to spare her, to save her; to prepare them.

Sent away, she leaves only them behind with a sprinkling of others who would organize together. But Mohinder and Sylar become their own entity made up of two within the larger one.

With the reason for daily negotiations removed, packed off far away, the clarity that shines through is not as expected.

Once upon a time, then, finds its place somewhere just beyond their middle. The upturned peak in the imperfect line is the most relevant position from which to kick off their story.

It had been only them once. Ten disappearances and resurrections of Sylar later and it would be only them again. With no one else to perform for, except each other, glimpses of the other side slip through with ease.

Conversations that were once awkward but welcoming, then truthful and destructive, rest in a shared familiarity bred from the earliest times. The invisible dew of a secret code drips from deliberately formed words, nestling in the chambers of their ears, making an undisputed claim.

They return to the self-contained fortress of the car, but these trips are different than before. The exercise of passing time reconfigures itself into the contemplative sharing of cracked and broken puzzle pieces, taped together; laid side by side, a precise fit.

The first of a jovial laugh breaks a hole in the wall before it can be snatched back by the mouth from which it escapes. Again they are transformed.

With time the shared laughter surpasses the uncomfortable unwillingness to accept what is happening. Then it is smiling eyes from driver to passenger seat or across the table while leaning back, all relaxation and comfort, in a diner booth pit stop on a break from staking out Company letches.

For the first time, the only time, Mohinder can explain in scientific speak and only a few layman’s terms the nature of the research he carries out. An answer to a genuine want to know, Mohinder spares little thought for Sylar’s grasp of his words. Unofficially depending on his intuitive aptitude to make sense of it, a gesture of understanding that Sylar appreciates, Mohinder revels in sharing his work with someone who does not reduce it to gibberish.

The movement beyond fear and anger, beyond the battle cry of “Forward! Attack!” elicits the wonderment for how Sylar does, in the most precise terms down to the most miniscule actions, what he does. Mohinder is the only person Sylar walks through his ability, the only one who comprehends the fascinating importance beneath the house of horrors under which it lives. The descriptive details, once expected to break Mohinder, now bask in curiosity contentedly, sleepily.

Words with amused inflections and deep resonance are not enough to rub out the old past. But the new past, created from the rib of the present, moves them along a line temporarily parallel to the one once traveled before it ricochets off into uncharted territory.

Resistant willingness, bruised bones with jagged edges, barely sutured skin, exclaimed frustrations mark their steps around each other.

The flip of the switch, beneath the glow of hazy moonlight beams, and it is Mohinder injecting the powerful sedative into the neck of an attacking third party. Sylar is spared another resurrection interlude. The slowly healing killer’s body is dragged along, helped along by clammy hands offset with huffs and puffs and panicked whispers in Tamil.

Another night, another toss of the coin directs the speeding bullet into Mohinder’s abdomen. The shot clicks in Sylar’s ear before exiting the barrel, but mortal speed clips his feet. Mohinder’s glazed over eyes play I Spy with Sylar’s seething form throwing bodies like bottle caps.

Angry eyes resettle on dying ones and soften in a release.

“Don’t—,” hangs in the balance and they both know the plea but refuse to finish it. Awed dark eyes flinch at Mohinder’s quiet strength as he removes the offending object from his own body by his own surgical hand.

There is a want that, for once, is not about taking from but sharing with.

Chains clank on anchored feet with every step taken a reminder that ghosts can rise at any time. Cold and distant, Mohinder’s warmth is returned in Sylar’s unquestioned embrace. The jacket front re-imagined as a blanket wraps securely around, body surrounding body; it keeps the night demons at bay, unable to cross the moat and breach the walls.

Two lives saved, a song on repeat, it plays out again and again. Each time emits a trace of something best left unsaid but increasingly unavoidable. It muscles around the corners of the room, shoving aside furniture, tossing and turning in a restless fit.

It refuses to be ignored.

It refuses to be cast aside.

It stands firm.

So begins the orchestral movement towards the final act.

The beginning of the end starts with a smile.

A taunting one from Mohinder’s lips meant to annoy and patronize during the round three match of that particular day, it calls forth the attack blistering inside Sylar.

He telekinetically flips Mohinder around and slams him chest first into the wall. Thudding footsteps march towards the stuck man and an elbow is pushed against his neck, exerting a force that reminds them both who has the power in that given moment.

Sylar’s chest lies pressed against Mohinder’s back and they breathe together. Sylar replaces his elbow with the hard yet painless grip of his right hand around the back of Mohinder’s neck.

In and out is the steady pattern of air, inhaled and exhaled in a frantic rhythm that fills the silence. The soft press of a thumb along a patch of skin, rubbing the genie out of the bottle, and Mohinder is not pushing back or pretending to resist. He is waiting.

The hint of hot breath on moist skin and Mohinder’s sharp intake of breath breaks their pattern. Pulled slightly back from the wall there is just enough room for Sylar’s left arm to move around Mohinder’s chest, keeping him close, while Sylar drops his right hand and replaces his thumb with his lips.

Hovering at just the barest of touches, Sylar’s lips trace a murmuring of millimeters along the same skin patch, not deviating from the set course.

Pressing down, touch is undeniable. Dry lips are made wet by glistening skin and the briefest of tastes is accomplished by the flick of the tongue.

The line begins to fade into obscurity.

Mohinder’s hitched breathing responds to the second, third, fourth taste of him. Not a moan, but almost one, jumps from his mouth as the fifth taste lingers on his neck, sucking gently at first and then with more purpose.

It is not only the human contact that Mohinder has missed for so long that gathers such a sensual response hibernating for years, but that it is from his man specifically.

Sylar.

Mohinder’s rushing blood encourages Sylar to loosen his hold. Turned around, Mohinder and Sylar stand together, eyes searching each other; the question stands bare and unadorned.

It is Mohinder who answers first.

Raising his right hand to Sylar’s face his fingers lightly trace the edges of lips that drank of his skin. Sylar’s eyes remain unblinking while Mohinder rests one of his fingers at the break of his mouth, gently pushing forward until it meets a gentle tongue that caresses it in greeting.

Mohinder drops his hand and tilts his face upwards, gently nudging noses, and carefully touches his lips over top and then along Sylar’s. Closed eyes heighten senses and Mohinder samples the taste of warm lips and hot breath.

His hand shoves their bodies apart. Two steps back for a stunned Sylar while Mohinder’s feet race him to the bathroom. For ten minutes he dry heaves while Chandra’s disappointment and disapproval yells condemnations in his ears.

Stolen kisses work their ways into the middles and ends of fights. Quick or lingering, they last for as long as Mohinder wills it before dropping the guillotine of his conscience and self-disgust.

Resistance is no deterrent for Sylar. Steadily and patiently he pushes Mohinder’s limits further along and then a kiss is not just a kiss, if it ever was. Then a kiss accompanies feeling hands that grope and cling, bodies rubbing against each other, eyes playing truth or dare, pushing further along until…

The day comes when it is Sylar thrusting steadily inside of Mohinder who is bracing himself against the wall. The grunts and panting breath, a mixed drink of desire and disgust, that Mohinder lets loose slam into the solid barrier. He never turns his face.

Sometimes the space established by his firm hands flattened against the wall, keeping his body a persistent distance from the impenetrable barrier, becomes the invisible cushion. Sometimes Mohinder presses his forehead against the painted dry wall, the metaphor made physical for what is breaking down inside, as his hips are pushed, jerked, held in place; as Sylar bites and sucks his shoulders, as Sylar rests his own forehead against the tensed upper back while letting his hot breath burn insistent promises into Mohinder’s drenched skin.

Even when the game of musical chairs ends on another note and it is Mohinder pushing his way into Sylar who is bent over the desk with his hand firmly gripping the edges, Mohinder never looks. He cannot.

Sweat pouring off of Mohinder’s body with Sylar below groaning, backing his hips up into Mohinder, he demands more of Mohinder; insists on it, dragging out the guttural cry of completion that cannot be swallowed.

Mohinder’s hands press down on the back of Sylar’s neck to keep him from initiating eye contact, but feeling the rough pulsing skin beneath his fingertips handcuffs Mohinder to the unavoidable reality that encompasses them both.

Mostly Mohinder forces his own blindness with eyes willed shut.

No looking.

Or else he will see the blood.

In his minds eye the blood still drips from Sylar’s hands in his constant desire for increased power that comes of new abilities. The invisible bloody footprints mark the journey Sylar makes when he is not around, when he is alone and driven by a want and need that matches what he feels for Mohinder.

Mohinder does not look.

He runs.

After every impassioned release, it is a sprint to the bathroom with his insides clamoring up his throat. Sprinting turns into dejected and hurried steps; a dead man walking as the ghosts of the dead, murdered and brutally destroyed, hiss his name and curse him.

Sylar does not need Mohinder’s amorous gaze. Being inside of Mohinder, feeling the pressure of Mohinder around him, tasting him suffices. Feeling Mohinder drive into him, taking out his own wants and disgust on him is more than enough.

Until it is not.

Redrawing the line again, blowing away the eraser bits that mark the old one and sketching in the new boundary, Sylar spins Mohinder around and takes him from the front. The resistant gasp and pushing hands mean nothing to Sylar. The fight only encourages his resolve to make Mohinder look; to force him to see.

Sylar’s eyes speak the secrets Mohinder tries to tune out until the cerebral words are fact and Mohinder’s defiant response is his legs wrapped around Sylar’s hips, pulling him deeper inside, in sync with the slow steady drive into him, beyond the point of no return; guided by the soft mutterings of whispered declarations.

Still Mohinder remains restless in self-loathing.

Turning his insides out with his face in the toilet or coughing up nothing but air over the side of the bed, he tries to exorcise the repulsiveness he feels for the unbreakable connection to the creature of dangerous habit that has become a part of his life.

Mohinder feels he can accept this cruelly played hand. As long as he is sickened after each time, as long as he is haunted by the people Sylar has killed and continues to kill, as long as he shudders at Sylar’s blood red smile as he traces Mohinder ’s lips afterwards, then Mohinder knows he is not totally lost.

Tossing and turning means Mohinder is aware of the poisoned truth working its way through his veins. Sylar will never stop killing and taking what he feels he is entitled to. Mohinder will never expect him to, but he will never accept it either.

So long as that disgust scratches at Mohinder’s shoulders, Mohinder can do this.

He can open himself up and then hate himself afterwards. He accepts that.

Sylar wants more.

Sylar pushes further to where Mohinder wants him with no restraints, constraints or hang-ups. He wants Mohinder to feel the same but without the overwhelming remorse kicking at his heels.

Sylar travels Mohinder’s body on a sensory journey. Deep inside and across salty terrain there is a firm and gentle attack of kisses, bites, suckling; a claim of so much more. The hum of skin on skin, Sylar leaves no crinkle, ridge or curve unexplored. Softened eyes devour every angle and quiver. The mist of sweaty sheen that rises along Mohinder’s skin induces Sylar’s body to do the same. Light caresses match delicious sighs and trickles of laughter.

Unresisting eyes make clandestine proclamations. Lips yearningly ghost each other. Drippings of soul morsels are passed back and forth, moaned into each other, on the inhaled exhalation of fiery breath and unfinished words.

He is breaking through, not down.

He wants Mohinder with him, not submissive and passive.

Then it is too far and the end is born of the most basic achievement.

Mohinder does not run for the bathroom or dry heave over the side of the bed. Unthinkingly he settles on his side with Sylar’s arm around him and Sylar’s lips resting lightly against his neck.

Sleep is for the wicked.

And when Mohinder awakes he sees how wicked he has become.

Even if it is brief he has forgotten the taunting dead. He cannot call to mind his father’s face without careful contemplation.

The truth glares at sad eyes.

Next time leads to once more and an anxious to be continued. Still Sylar murders; still he seduces Mohinder to wipe out the existence of footprints from behind and instead focus on the two sets that lead out ahead of them, side-by-side. Remnants of Mohinder’s patchwork identity threaten to fly away and it is too much too fast as hell on earth is dressed up to appear heaven sent.

Contentment.

Mohinder leans over the edge of the bed to cough while his hand reaches for salvation. Rolling over to follow his lead Sylar rubs Mohinder’s back soothingly, the unmistakable traces of dried blood under his index finger from the day before.

Moving back to face him Sylar’s smile is broken as the needle finds its mark in his chest. No hesitation stays Mohinder’s hand, trigger happy with sedative.

Shock. Surprise. Disappointment. Expectation.

Sylar’s eyes pound out what his paralyzed body cannot, shout what his tongue is incapable of uttering. The heavy heart of conviction thumps in Mohinder’s chest while reaching for the knife buried in the drawer of the nightstand.

In a fluid movement he is straddling Sylar; Mohinder claims the last power move.

Betrayed by a kiss, or set free by one, Mohinder brings his lips to Sylar’s and gently lays them together. Their open eyes shout in anger and a shared desperation for the only one who ever –

There is no solace in the finality of goodbye. It is a bitter sadness for what could never be because the compromises demanded were far too obscene.

It requires the force of Mohinder’s body weight to tear the knife through flesh and bone to cotton sheets.

Baptism by blood, Mohinder sets aside Sylar’s head on a platter.

Almost the end.

But not quite.

************ ********** ********** ********** **********   
**  
“Hello Mohinder.”

“Hello Noah.”

With a folder in hand Bennet enters his office to find a very anxious Mohinder trying to keep from pacing.

“Are you okay?” Bennet asks curiously while retaining an air of professionalism.

Mohinder sighs exasperatedly.

“I will be once we--,”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Bennet interrupts walking towards his desk while only briefly breaking eye contact to direct his gaze at Mohinder’s hand still resting on the photographs of the Bennet family.

Surprised at the question Mohinder snatches his hand away from the picture frame and says, “Of course.”

Bennet half sits on the edge of his desk and raises an eye at Mohinder.

“You do understand you’re asking to get rid of all of it?”

Mohinder steps back from Bennet and heads over to the sofa. He slumps down and runs his hands through his hair.

“Yes,” he utters quietly, his eyes focused on the floor.

Bennet waits a few moments before standing up and approaching Mohinder. Looking down on the broken man Bennet places a comforting hand on his shoulder, causing Mohinder to look up at him expectantly.

“Okay,” Bennet says.

He opens the file still in his hand and peruses some pages.

“You’ve already brought in everything. Every memento, keepsake, souvenir; anything that could remind you--,”

“Yes,” Mohinder interjects. “You have it all, destroyed already.”

A knock turns two sets of eyes to the door. Bennet’s partner enters and closes the door behind him.

“You’ve seen the file,” Bennet waves The Haitian in. “He wants everything of Sylar gone.”

“The only remembrance I need,” Mohinder speaks up, “is a hint of his name as my father’s killer, who in turn was arrested and killed while in prison in a random attack of violence.”

Bennet and The Haitian, standing next to each other, look over at him as he continues to spell out his wishes.

“But everything else—Zane, Gabriel, Sylar—the cons, the lies, working together, being together, being in—the life we—the—just take it away.”

The distraught tone of Mohinder’s voice is apparent to all three men.

“Mohinder--,” Bennet begins.

“It’s the only way I can be free of him, Noah,” Mohinder pleads.

“As long as he is still up here,” Mohinder continues pointing to his head, “he hovers over my steps, lurks in the back of my mind—smirking, questioning—I can breathe him, see him; feel him. He’s haunting me. He’s breaking me, still.”

The confession splits the air and Mohinder can only hope that Bennet understands.

With a sigh Bennet reminds him, “Once we do this, it’s done. You’ll have nothing left that will--,”

“Noah,” Mohinder levels sad but fierce eyes on him. “I understand what I’m giving up but…it’s the only way. I can’t pick and choose to rewrite only bits of it. One remembrance will lead to another and then one day it will only be the bad ones and they’ll destroy the good ones, override them and I…I can’t lose them like that—This way I can control it even if it means…”

Bennet nods his understanding and looks over to The Haitian who walks over to Mohinder and directs his hand to his forehead.

Mohinder remains watchful in a last look at the world through these eyes, his original eyes.

Feeling the tugging pull on his brain he shuts his eyelids.

Thirty seconds later Mohinder Suresh is reborn. 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Heroes Slash Awards  
> **Nominated for Best Death Fic**
> 
> Mylar Fic Awards  
> **Nominated for Best Haitianization**


End file.
